Words from Fredrick Robinson

Words from Fredrick Robinson

Premature talks of reconciliation is a hustle. Indeed, the notion that we can have racial reconciliation before we have justice is illusory. Yes, we can worship and work together, get married, develop friendships, live in the same neighborhoods, love each other individually, and come together to address issues of police brutality, racism and injustice (and we should)—but none of that is RECONCILIATION at a macro level. Genuine reconciliation is IMPOSSIBLE as long as white supremacy is on the throne. As long as black and brown bodies are denigrated and marginalized economically, socially, and politically there can be no reconciliation except of the cheap, self-centered kind. Folks who want to rush to reconciliation do so because they are uncomfortable feeling, seeing and witnessing the anger of the oppressed. They must quiet that righteous rage and quickly assure oppressed people that everything is going to be alright because such anger and vivid examples of injustice threaten their tidy, neat Americanized ideology and expose it as a FRAUD. We must come to grips with the fact that the way America is organized is a sham and that much of our theology aids and abets it. Reconciliation that preserves the privilege of whites is no reconciliation at all.